Holy Smokes guys. the holy land is so cool! Ok so where I left off....The next day we had EIGHT HOURS of class...why? Because you can't tour when it rains, and it rained ALL DAY. So now, we all HATE rain with a passion!
The next day we left early to tour all day I got to go on top of the wall of Jerusalem and walk around! So cool right? We got to see the Christian Quarter and the Muslim quarter. It was so cool to see all around Jerusalem! At the end we came back down at the Damascus Gate which is Arab/ Muslim area. We were instructed to pull out our modesty kit (in regular terms: scarves) and cover our necks and shoulders as much as possible. The guys in our group were instructed to surround the women and this is how we were to walk through the "Shuk" or Arab open air market. I was fine until someone asked why we were to do this. Apparently last year, on this trip, a girl was minding her own business, but not covered up (without scarf) and an arab man walked up and gave her a bear hug and started speaking to her in Arabic. Apparently he thought she was a hooker. YAY.
We made it through the Shuk fine, of course there was that occassional creepy stare at our ankles that we got for those of us wearing capris but the guys were careful to surround and watch out for us. My nick name in the group is MBI (oh, haha like our school!) (I dont like it), but I am trying to get Mcbeth to catch on since the guys are determined to give everyone a brand new nick name. Anyways, during this escapade through the Shuk one of the guys steps up to my left side and says "Don't worry MBI, I will protect you" haha thank you, thank you very much!
After the Shuk, we had lunch at Beit yehuda and then..Surprise! 2 hours of class, so much for touring all day. After that everyone went back to their rooms and passed out for an hour before dinner. After dinner we had homework and locating toilet paper. Wait, did I just say locating toilet paper? yes, yes I did. Apparently they don't care if you run out toilet paper here. So we make late night runs to the public restrooms in the building to steal toilet paper...BAD TO THE BONE.
The next day, Friday (Feb. 8) we had normal class, but wait theres always a catch! At our half way break (two hours in) we went to another class to hear from our leader abour Shabbat, the Jewish day of rest. So we sat in there (on accident) talking about and asking questions about what to wear and how to act that night for the Shabbat dinner. Apparently richer Jews, can afford to stay in a hotel so that their Shabbat is more restful. They have strict rules about not turning the lights on or off and not driving or cooking or standing to use the restroom. I mean it all sounds weird to us, but cant you think of a few people who just need a freaking Shabbat? haha. I do. What customs they observer and dont oberve pertains to who their rabbi is, kinda scary right? Anyways, we got the afternoon off, our first significant amount of free time and we did homework and I accidentaly took a two hour nap....obviously I needed it though. After that I got up and all the girls were prepping to look good for Erev Shabbat the opening night of Shabbat.
They have a giant meal and dress up and sing songs and light candles signaling the beginning. We walked in to our dining hall ( the hotel is created to accomodate these guests) and it was flipped into a nice dining Jew party. ha. They had all kinds of celebration dinner foods and breads, of course our tables were easily recognized...why? We had non-alcoholic wine at our table. haha of course...no fun for us! Just kidding.
We sat down, and our prof walked us through blessing our wine, passing bread around and blessing it and we ate. It was fun to experience so much culture around us! We enjoyed our first Shabbat, but it wasn't minutes after returning from dinner that we had changed from churchy clothes to sport shorts and tees and tennis shoes, to play SOCCER! So fun! We split into teams of three. unfortunately we played on the edge of our compound near a fence bordering palestinian people. I was the genius who managed to boot the ball over the fence...twice. sorry guys! At least I got a goal or two in, right?
Ok this next day takes so much explanation, I HAVE to shorten it. Sorry! my hands are cramping from all this typing and my eyes are slowly coming to a close. Saturday we headed out to a Messianic Jewish congregation church-thing. The service was completely split into jewish and then translated into english. It was SO hard to follow, but SO FUN you guys! You just don't even know! I was eating up every ounce of it I could get. After two hours though my brain was so done. Afterwards they had a luncheon which ended up lasting 3 hours. You can imagine how DONE we were after that. But we headed out to Jericho instead. I posted pictures on Facebook, but the hills were brilliant as we descended from a couple thousand feet above sea level to a couple hundred below. The verses from psalm were ringing true in all our heads about the mountains surrounding jerusalem and the grass withering and the flowers fading. there is nothing like watching scripture come alive before your eyes!
We finally got to Jericho and HOW HUMBLING it was to stand before the ruins of a once powerful city! Our leader brought along a friend archaeologist to describe what we were looking at and we hopped a couple of fences (im pretty sure it was pretty illegal) and got ABSOLUTE INSIDER information! Guys! ONCE IN A LIFE TIME doesn't begin to describe this stuff! It was amazing! next we loaded up the bus for herod's winter palace ruins. That wasn't as impressive since it was far away because of a very convenient road block, but there was a wonderful sunset that we got to take pictures in front of.
Sunday! We went to a SOUTHERN BAPTIST church y'all!! It was so fun! Some of our group did music and Sig preached! There were two guys from ALABAMA in the congregation! SO fun :) oh, and free food after services seems to be a very very good theme around here! We had pre-packed luinches and headed out to the city once again. We took a detour for ice cream and then headed to the rockafeller museum which the security guard was closing. NOT A PROBLEM. Our leader knows everyone! We got a personalized (speedy) tour from the security guard of the museum! It was so cool! I can't remember everything that was there, but one thing was an ACTUAL tomb from Jericho that they found in the ruins...SO COOL.
After that we spent two hours in a library FILLED with ancient biblical texts that PHDs from all over the world travel there to take advantage of...SOO COOL! Then we were left in the middle of the city and told to find our way...it was easy.
Sorry for all the rushed entries, but I am so crunched for time! I HAVE to go to bed now, but I heard about all of you guys praying for me from my parents and I wanted to thank you so much! I SUPER appreciate all of the support! Love y'all! Laila Tov (Good night)
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